Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the successor to Microsoft's Xbox video game console, developed in co-operation with IBM, ATI, Samsung and SiS. Information on the console first came through viral marketing campaigns and it was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detailed launch and game information divulged later that month at the prominent Electronic Entertainment Expo. Upon its release the Xbox 360 became the first console to have a simultaneous launch across the three major regions. It also serves as the first entrant in a History of video games (seventh generation era)|new generation of game consoles and will compete against Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii. Microsoft believes that its push towards High-definition gaming, year-early headstart and its Xbox Live online gaming service will help in the console's success. Overview Development Known during development as the Xenon, Xbox 2, Xbox Next or NeXtBox, the Xbox 360 was conceived in early 2003. In January of 2003 planning for Xenon software platform began. That month Microsoft held an event for 400 developers in Bellevue, Washington to recruit support for the system. Also that month Peter Moore, former president of Sega of America, joined Microsoft. On August 12, 2003 ATI signed on to produce the graphic processing unit for the new console, a deal which was publicly announced two days later. The following month IBM signed on to develop the Tri-Core CPU for the console. In the summer of 2004, G4 TV reported that Microsoft had shown an early design of "Project Xenon" to a select few gamers at the Mountain Dew Den at the Mall of America. Before the launch of the Xbox 360, several alpha development kits where spotted using Apple iMac G5 hardware. Games running on these were reported to be using 25-30% of the actual systems power.http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/615/615667p1.html Microsoft chose to use these systems for their PowerPC architecture, which is similar to that of the Xenon CPU used in the system. Launch The Xbox 360 was released on November 22, 2005 in United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, December 2 2005 in Europe, December 10 2005 in Japan, February 2, 2006 in Mexico and Colombia, February 24 2006 in South Korea, March 16 2006 in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan and March 23, 2006 in Australia and New Zealand after a 3-week delay. Also, an official launch for the Philippines was announced. At E3 2006, Microsoft announced that the console will be officially launched in eight new countries: South Africa, Chile, India, Brazil, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Due to its early launch, the Xbox 360 has a jump start on both of its competitors, Sony's Playstation 3 and Nintendo's Wii, which are scheduled for release during the fourth quarter 2006. Because of a manufacturing bottleneck for having started the massive manufacturing only 69 days before launching,"Nintendo's Wii may get early launch", CNN Money, July 5, 2006 Microsoft was not able to supply enough systems to meet consumer demand in Europe or North America."Xbox 360 sells out within hours", BBC, December 2 2005 Many potential customers were not able to procure a console at launch and the lack of availability led to Xbox 360 bundles selling on eBay at grossly inflated prices, with some auctions exceeding US$2000. By year's end Microsoft had sold 1.5 million units; including 900,000 in North America, 500,000 in Europe, and 100,000 in Japan. Only six games were initially offered and eagerly anticipated titles like Dead or Alive 4 and Enchanted Arms|eM -eNCHANT arM-'' were not released until several weeks after launch. Retail configurations Microsoft's retail strategy involves two different configurations of the Xbox 360 in most countries: the ''Xbox 360 Stock Keeping Unit|SKU, frequently referred to as the Xbox 360 Premium Package; and an Xbox 360 Core System SKU. At launch, the Xbox 360 was priced at United States dollar|USD $399. The Core System is not available in Japan, instead Microsoft offers a package identical to the Xbox 360 SKU for Japanese yen|JPN ¥37,900. Additionally in Australia and New Zealand the Xbox Live headset in the Xbox 360 Package was not included . BusinessWeek magazine compiled a report that estimates the total cost of components in the "premium" bundle at $525 USD, sans manufacturing costs, meaning that Microsoft is losing money on every Xbox 360 system sold (in the United States, at least). It should be noted that the Razor and blades business model|strategy of selling a console at a loss or near-loss is common in the console games industry, as console makers can usually expect to make up the loss through game licensing. Furthermore, since Microsoft owns the intellectual property rights to the hardware used in the Xbox 360, they can easily switch to new fabrication processes or change suppliers in the future in order to reduce manufacturing costs. This flexibility stands in contrast to the situation faced with the original Xbox, which Microsoft was never able to reduce manufacturing costs below the Breakeven|break-even point. Microsoft is predicting that with the Xbox 360, a greater market share and falling hardware costs will eventually make system sales profitable. Suggested retail price by region Xbox Live Silver and Gold With the launch of the Xbox 360, Microsoft's online gaming service, Xbox Live went through a major upgrade, adding a basic non-subscription service, Silver, to its already established premium subscription-based service, Gold. Xbox Live Silver is free of charge and allows users to create a user profile, join on message boards, access Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade, along with marketplace and talk to other members. Xbox Live supports voice communication along with video communication, a feature to be launched sometime in 2006. Xbox Live Gold has the same features as Silver, plus online game playing capabilities. Microsoft has allowed for previous Xbox Live subscribers to maintain their profile information, buddy lists, and games history when they make the transition to Xbox Live Gold. To transition an Xbox Live account to the new system the user needs to link a Microsoft Passport Network|Windows Live ID to their gamertag on Xbox.com. Then when the user goes to add a Xbox Live enabled profile to their console, the user just needs to provide the console with their passport account information. An Xbox Live Gold account costs $49.99 USD, $59.99 CDN, £39.99 Pounds Sterling, €59.99 per year. Marketplace The Xbox Live Marketplace is a virtual market designed for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console that allows Xbox Live subscribers to download purchased or promotional content. The service offers movie and game trailers, game demos, Xbox Live Arcade games, gamer tag images, and Xbox 360 Dashboard themes.These features are avaible to both silver and gold members on Xbox live.To purchase the products off market place a hard drive is needed to store the products. In order to download priced content users are required to purchase Microsoft Points for use as scrip. Not all products have a price, as some are free to download. Arcade Xbox Live Arcade is an online service operated by Microsoft that is used to distribute video games to Xbox and Xbox 360 owners. The service was first launched in late 2004 and offers games from about $5 to $15 USD. In late 2005, Xbox Live Arcade was relaunched with the release of the Xbox 360 in which new games and features were offered. The games are generally aimed toward more casual gamers, examples of some of the more popular among them are Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting, and UNO. Software Interface A unique feature of the console is its robust graphical user interface, the Xbox 360 Dashboard; a Tab (GUI)|tabbed interface that features four "Blades". It can be launched automatically when the console booting|boots up without a disc, or when the disc tray is ejected; or the user may choose to launch a game automatically if a disk is inserted. A simplified version of it can also be accessed at any time via the Xbox Guide button on the gamepad. This simplified version shows the user's gamercard, Xbox Live messages and friends list. It also allows for personal and music settings, in addition to voice or video chats. Dashboard Version Information: *'Base Kernel Version (Retail):' 2.0.1888 *'Current Dashboard Version:' 2.0.2858 Release date: 6/13/06 **Upgrades in current versionDashboard updates include: ***New slideshow options have been added for Photo Viewing, which can save folder layout between sessions. ***DVD playback can resume playing from where it was stopped last time. ***Background downloading (allows multiple downloads) ***Reorganized Xbox Live Marketplace ***The option to boot to either disk or dashboard in the settings menu Microsoft XNA Microsoft XNA is a set of tools and technologies which include XNA Studio which provides versions of key production tools such as asset management, defect tracking, project automation and work lists. These tools are designed to work together to automate common development tasks and present interfaces tailored to the different functions within the team. John Carmack stated at QuakeCon 2005 that the Xbox 360 has "the best development environment I've seen on a console."John Carmack on XNA Microsoft XNA also includes other components such as the XNA Framework and XNA Build. Backward compatibility Backward compatibility is achieved through software emulation of the original Xbox. Emulated games offer graphical enhancements because they are rendered in 720p resolution with anti-aliasing enabled rather than the Xbox standard of 480p. Some games also benefit from an improvement in the rendered draw distance, possibly due to the system's greater memory bandwidth. However there are also games that do not perform well in emulation; these often exhibit a lower framerate on the Xbox 360."Backward Compatibility Playtest", ign.com, 11 January 2006 A hard drive is required to enable backward compatibility. Updated emulation profiles can be obtained through Xbox Live, by CD/DVD authoring|burning a CD with profiles downloaded from Xbox.com, or by ordering an update disc from Microsoft."Backward Compatibility FAQ", xbox.com, 7 February 2006 The full list of backward-compatible games is maintained at Xbox.com. Although the current U.S. list includes over 200 games, fewer titles are backward compatible in European and Japanese markets."Backward Compatibility Games List", Microsoft Japan Microsoft has stated that they intend to release more emulation profiles as they become available, with a goal of making the entire Xbox library playable on the Xbox 360. They have since made multiple statements indicating that this may never be complete, and the rate of updates to the backwards compatibility list is in line with this stated attitude."Q & A: Backward Compatibility", xbox.com Game library Below is a list of some popular games that have or will be released on the Xbox 360. Image:1504-t.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Perfect Dark Zero, Microsoft's flagship launch title First party Second Party Third Party List of Multiplayer Games features: Multiplayer_features_in_XBox_360_games Hardware Central processing unit Image:IBMxenon.jpg|200px|thumb|Xbox 360 CPU with some thermal paste left on it The central processing unit|CPU, named Xenon (processor)|Xenon (Microsoft) or Waternoose (IBM) is a custom IBM triple-core PowerPC-based design."Application-customized CPU design", Brown, Jeffery, IBM developerWorks, 2005 *90 nanometer|90 nm process, 165 million transistors (65 nanometer|65 nm process Silicon on insulator|SOI revision in 2007"Xbox 360 getting new CPU", GameSpot, 23 April, 2006) *Three symmetrical cores, each one Simultaneous multithreading|SMT-capable and clocked at 3.2 Hertz|GHz *One AltiVec|VMX-128 SIMD unit per core *128×128 register file for each VMX unit *1 Mebibyte|MiB L2 cache (lockable by the GPU) running at half core speed *Dot product performance: 9.1 billion per second *115 FLOPS|GFLOPS theoretical peak performance *Read-only memory|ROM storing Microsoft private encrypted keys Graphics processing unit Image:R500gpu.jpg|200px|thumb|Xbox 360 GPU; note the smaller eDRAM Integrated circuit|die to the left of the main Xenos die The "Xenos" graphics processing unit|GPU is a custom chip designed by ATI Technologies|ATI. (Developed under the name "C1", sometimes "R500") The chip contains two separate silicon dies: the parent GPU and the daughter eDRAM. *338 million transistors total (232 million parent shader die+105 million EDRAM daughter die) *500 MHz parent GPU (90 nm TSMC process, 232 million transistors) *500 MHz 10 MiB daughter Embedded DRAM framebuffer (90 nm process, 105 million transistors) **NEC Corporation|NEC designed eDRAM die includes additional logic for color, alpha blending, Z-buffering|Z/Stencil buffer|stencil buffering, and anti-aliasing. **105 million transistors *16 Texture filtering|filtered or unfiltered texture samples per clock *Maximum Polygon (computer graphics)|polygon performance: 500 million triangles per second *Texel (graphics)|Texel fillrate: 8 gigatexel per second fillrate (16 textures x 500 MHz) *Pixel fillrate: 16 gigasamples per second fillrate using 4X multisample anti aliasing (MSAA), or 32 gigasamples using Z-only operation; 4 gigapixels per second without MSAA (8 ROPs x 500 MHz) *Dot product operations: 24 billion per second or 33.6 billion per second theoretical maximum when summed with CPU operations *Cooling: Both the Graphics Processing Unit|GPU and Central Processing Unit|CPU of the console have heatsinks. The CPU's heatsink uses heatpipe technology, to efficiently conduct heat from the CPU to the fins of the heatsink."Xbox 360 cooling hardware images" The heatsinks are actively cooled by a pair of 60 mm exhaust fans that push the air out of the case (negative case pressure). Memory and system bandwidth Image:X360bandwidthdiagram.jpg|right|243px|Xbox 360 Bandwidth Diagram Memory *512 Mebibyte|MiB 700 MHz GDDR3 Random access memory|RAM *Total system memory is shared with the GPU via the Shared memory|unified memory architecture *Produced by Samsung or Infineon Technologies. System bandwidth *256 GB/s eDRAM internal logic to eDRAM internal memory bandwidth *32 GB/s GPU to eDRAM bandwidth (2 GHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle on a 64 bit DDR bus) *22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth (700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge) on a 128 bit bus) *21.6 GB/s front side bus (aggregated 10.8 GB/s upstream and downstream) *1 GB/s Southbridge (computing)|southbridge bandwidth (aggregated 500 MB/s upstream and downstream) Audio and video *All games must support at least Surround sound#Surround (discrete Dolby Digital, DTS)|six channel Dolby Digital surround sound using optical output *Support for 48 kHz 16-bit audio *320 independent decompression channels *32 bit processing *256+ audio channels *No voice echo to game players on the same console; voice goes only to remote consoles *Voice communication is handled by the console, not by the game code. This allows players to communicate online even if they are playing different games. *Uses XMA codec *The GPU can dynamically crop the image to fit the user's screen. | valign=top| Supported codecs *VC-1 at non-HDTV|HD NTSC and PAL resolutions or WMV HD *VC-1 or WMV for streaming video *Bink video *MPEG-2 decoder for DVD video playback |} Storage *Optical ** DVD: (12x, 16.0 MB/s) Xbox 360 Dual-layer recording|DL DVD-ROM (7GB usable"New Xbox360 Tech Info From CEDEC", GamersReports, 9 September 2005), DVD-Video, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW. ** Compact Disc|CD: Red Book (audio CD standard)|CD-DA, CD-R/CD-RW|RW, CD-ROM XA, CD-Extra, Windows Media Audio|WMA-CD, MP3-CD, and JPEG Photo CD ** HD DVD: Optional external drive planned for release Q4 2006 * Hard drive: 20 GB (Only 13GB available to user)40 GB & 120 GB optional, detachable, upgradeable, and external 2.5" SATA drive (5400 rpm) * 64MB Memory Unit: Sold separately * 256MB Memory Unit: Announced, planned for release Q4 2006 Components and accessories *'Controllers': Up to four controllers, either wired or wireless. *'Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel': Includes force feedback, used for racing games *'Faceplates': Used to change the look of the front of the console. *'HD DVD Drive': An external drive used to play HD DVDs to be released in Q4 2006. *'Detachable Hard Drive:' An optional detachable SATA 20 GB hard drive. Used for the storage of games, music, and other content. *'Memory Unit:' A portable device to save data. *'Play and Charge Kit:' Allows the controller to be recharged while playing a game by plugging the controller into a USB port. *'Wireless Network Adapter:' A Wi-Fi adapter (802.11a/g/b) to connect to Xbox Live, or a home network through a wireless router. *'Headset:' Headset used for communication over Xbox Live, wired and wireless versions available. *'Live Vision Camera:' An Xbox 360 branded webcam. *'Universal Media Remote:' Assists in the playing of DVD movies and music. Miscellaneous Other *Capable of accelerating procedural synthesis to dynamically generate game data. *The option to apply a regional lockout to games is available to publishers. See List of Xbox 360 games without region encoding. DVD region codes are always enforced. * 1 RJ45 ethernet port for 100BASE-TX (100 Mbit/s), located on the back of the console. *Specifications are also available at the official Xbox 360 website."Xbox 360: Feel the Power", Microsoft *Some users have reported hardware problems. *Also Find help in conecting XBOX to a USB modem Sales figures Total: "Approximately" 5 million consoles sold"Microsoft Reports Fourth Quarter Results", www.microsoft.com(as of the end of June 2006) *Quarterly Data **Q4 2005, 1.5 million units shipped"Microsoft ships 1.5 million Xbox 360 units in Q4", www.tgdaily.com, 26 January 2006 **Q1 2006, 1.7 million units shipped"Xbox marks the sore spot", money.cnn.com, 28 April 2006 **Q2 2006, 1.8 million units shippedhttp://www.microsoft.com/msft/download/fy06/Q4-FY06ERSlides.ppt#15 "Fourth Quarter & fiscal Year 2006 Results", www.microsoft.com, 20 July 2006 *'Forcasted' total estimates: **Q4 2006, 10 million units **Q2 2007, 15 million units"15 million shipped in 18 months" Category:Resources